


to focus on us

by Julx3tte



Series: you can sail on thin ice long as i can too [8]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Smut, bed sharing, built up emotions coming to light, emotions are hard, never thought i'd see that tag, nothing explicit it's still M rated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:13:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24367885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Julx3tte/pseuds/Julx3tte
Summary: direct sequel to "gonna make sure that you have enough"Sylvain asks Ingrid to stay with him. they stay.feat. feelings and bottled up feelings and feelings erupting.
Relationships: Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Series: you can sail on thin ice long as i can too [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1747528
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	to focus on us

_ “Stay the night with me?” He asked, finally out loud. _

_ “I will, yeah.” _

Well, it took him long enough. She’d heard Sylvain leave his room a few hours ago, but knew to let him have some time to be alone. Whatever prompted him to skulk around the monastery so late at night must have been serious.

Ingrid was lucky she got hungry, too - it gave her a good excuse to go to the kitchens and find him. 

Now, with his arm around her waist and his head leaning gently on top of hers, Ingrid guided him skillfully back to the dormitories.

She’d taken care of him after drinking before, but he’d never been so affectionate. It was nice, with how cold the night was, that his body was so warm. But Ingrid focused on keeping him moving, leading him with a hand placed on the small of his back.

The drunkenness was probably an act by now. He sobered up once she said that they would all go back to Gautier with him and face his parents together. If anything, she would. But She knew Sylvain would need to be coaxed into telling her how he was really feeling about that. There was a lot he left unsaid, a lot she read in between his advances and the silence he left in between apologizing and asking.

Asking her to stay with him was a milestone in and of itself, one she was glad to have crossed: it meant she could finally ask for the same thing.

She hadn’t, yet. Sure years ago he came to stay in Galatea, but he was on the other side of the castle. Since they’d started their…. Not-yet relationship, they’d spent nights together, they’d made not-yet love, they’d pulled each other close and held each other and let the heat consume them. They’d fallen asleep in tangled limbs and woken up at dawn, rushing to get their armor on for battle or war council.

But they hadn’t yet  _ asked _ . Just assumed, invited, said.

It was different to ask.

Ingrid couldn’t properly rationalize it. Not faux-bearing Sylvain’s weight even though both of them knew he could walk just fine; not with the feeling of his fingers pressed against her waist, pulling her mere millimeters closer to him by the step.

It was different to ask, and he’d finally asked.

* * *

They got to Sylvain’s door and didn’t let her open it. 

“Not… can we go to yours?” 

His eyes - damn hazelnut that always reminded her of the nutty spread she put on her sandwiches sometimes (or maybe the other way around - anything hazel reminded her of Sylvain these days) - said  _ please _ for him and she nodded.

In her room, she lit one of few the Galatean candles she had left while Sylvain plopped on her bed, arranging the pillows so they could both sit against the length of the bed and the wall.

He was wearing just nightclothes, but she’d bundled up, adding on a robe and a coat to keep her warm. She let them fall to the ground, leaving her in just a long shirt.

“Thanks Ing,” he said, once she finally sat next to him. They both stared at the candle across the room, bouncing its light around the room’s stone walls. Sylvain’s feet dangled over the edge of the bed, too tall to fit.

“What’s wrong with your room?” she asked.

“It’s… ah. I don’t want to take you there like this.” He turned away from her slightly; Ingrid could tell his eyes did the same thing

“Like what?” she teased. “What exactly do you think is going to happen tonight?”

Sylvain snapped his head to look at her, but she was already smirking at him.

“Don’t joke like that,” he pouted.

“Have to joke somehow, you know. Can’t have you sulking when I’ve taken you to bed.”

Sylvain laughed increduciously. “Taken  _ me _ to bed?”

“Well you’re in my room aren’t you?”

“I… okay. You’ve got me there.”

Ingrid let the silence ebb between them, opting to rest her head on his shoulder instead of adding more words.

There was a trick to getting Sylvain to drop his facade. During school, everyone thought they had it figured out. They showered him with affection and feigned coyness, giving him the illusion of initiative.

Truthfully, it was the other way. She and Felix and Dimitri knew the real secret to getting something honest out of Sylvian was to press him - push him into an awkward corner and just wait. He was always at his best when he had to think his way out; it was part of why the professor always put him so deep into the flank during battle.

So Ingrid waited. She’d learned to be comfortable waiting like this, and at some point she let her hands find his, and she waited some more.

_ You’re safe here _ , she squeezed gently into his hand.  _ I’m here for you _ . 

* * *

She didn’t look at him, but she could tell his eyes were closed. His breath was level and steady, and for a moment she was worried he’d fallen asleep.

But eventually, he sighed and turned his head to her and she could see his eyes if she looked up at him enough. She could see his lips too, but that could wait.

“I’m scared Ing.” A breath, then: “not about my family. I think I’ve always been at terms with knowing I’d have to take over it all soon, or eventually. I’m scared about what it would mean to leave here and go home and have you and the prince and everyone else in tow. About what it would say about the war. About what it would mean for us.”

“Sylvain….” she squeezed his hand and didn’t let them go.

“I don’t… I don’t want to ask anyone to carry more burdens that aren’t theirs. Especially not you. We haven’t even gotten to talk about this all yet. I was hoping we’d… have more time to put some words to this and to figure things out.” 

Sylvain sighed, then turned his body so that he was on his knees, facing her. He took her hand and put it against his face and held it so tenderly that Ingrid wasn’t sure whether to hug him or bite her lips.

“I don’t want to leave you but I don’t want to ask you to decide all of this so soon. Not when you have so much at stake too. I’m sorry.”

* * *

Ingrid had only seen Sylvain cry in earnest a few times. Once, when they were young and he’d just escaped Miklan’s bullying, she’d caught him and Glenn talking while she was trying to follow her betrothed. 

A second time, during his first real heartbreak and before he’d decided womanizing was a useful facade, he cried into her shoulder and talked him down from throwing his crest and inheritance away.

It was different to be on the receiving end of his tears - and more surreal that it was out of love and not betrayal.

Sylvain looked torn - between his loyalties and his heart, and all she could do was kneel too and pull him into a hug.

His arms wrapped around her and held her so tightly that she couldn’t breathe, then relaxed. He took a few steadying breaths then pulled away so he could look right into her face.

“I love you Ing. I don’t know what that means for you. For your family and to your father and your house. I don’t know if it’ll be okay for me to return home with my heart so set on something. But I love you.”

It was Ingrid’s turn to cry. The emotions she’d been so careful to dam up, to let crawl but never run, erupted out of her chest, and she sobbed into his shoulder. Her hands gripped parts of his shirt to keep her from falling. But Sylvain held her tight, keeping her upright.

At a different time, Ingrid would have thought it silly that they would confess in the dormitory, kneeling on a bed and barely able to say the words they needed to.

But for now, all Ingrid felt was the release of years of frustration, of efforts that went unnoticed, of promises that weren’t sure.

She’d told him to protect her, sure. That they’d be friends of some sort forever - that they meant too much to each other to lose that. But years of cleaning up after him had made her wonder what their friendship would become. 

The last year of circling around each other, spending nights and flirting and stealing moments had given her hope. But this confession put to words something her heart was already sure of.

“I love you too Sylvain.”

She said the words as a whisper to his ear, and he pulled them down to the bed together, burying his face in her neck.

* * *

Whatever it was they were doing before, making love was superior.

Sylvain tore off his nightclothes and pulled Ingrid hungrily atop him. She straddled him while he slid her shirt above her head, leaving her chest exposed to the cold air.

His breath was like fire, kissing every part of her, from her earlobes down to collarbones, and lower, not caring whether the marks he left would be visible to everyone tomorrow.

Ingrid’s hands pinned Slyvain’s hips to the bed and rolled her own hips on top. Sylvain groaned a deep and lovely sound, and his hands found her waist, urging her to swell and surge and dance. 

And then they flipped. Ingrid wrapped her legs around Sylvain’s torso as he kissed his way through every cold nerve on her body, looping his way around her breasts, pausing deliciously at the summit, and back up to rest his warm breath on her neck. 

His hips rocked slowly, then hurriedly, building up a pace that took the breath from her lungs. Between sucking in air and letting her fingers take him by the hair and pull his face closer to her neck, her mouth, her lips, she whispered his name, or tried to. 

She got as far as the first syllable as the pressure built up deep in the belly of her stomach and her legs clenched around him.

Wonderful. It was wonderful and magnificent, that he loved her and that she finally knew it. That she didn’t have to waste years courting some noble she didn’t care about, that wouldn’t let her fight and fly and hold  _ Luin _ , that wouldn’t let her stand by her friends and protect them. That Galatea’s financial woes and her family’s expectations wouldn’t drown the most important things to her.

That the most important thing to her was here, treating her to something he’d never given to another, that he’d never give to anyone else.

That the way he moaned her name into her neck, the way his breath ran ragged at the feel of her, that the pressure building up inside of her was because of him and nobody would dare say a word tomorrow if they heard them making love through the night. That these things were hers and hers alone sent Ingrid into rapture, praying Sylvain’s name through the end.

* * *

At some point, Sylvain kissed her forehead, stood to gather some towels and tea for her to drink, helped her settle into bed and crawled in next to her.

By the time Ingrid woke in the morning, Sylvain was still asleep, face buried on her back, arm wrapped around her waist, legs tangled together. She squeezed his hand tight and closed her eyes, savoring the moments.

**Author's Note:**

> wow ok.


End file.
